"Sleep, little fox." The creepy whisper came through the cheap monitor on Damen Cross’s mahogany desk,

The heavy French doors of the study flew open as Damen sprinted into the dark corridor, moving with the brutal speed of a hunting hound.

"Damen, wait!" I screamed, lunging to my feet. The cleaning bucket tipped over, murky water soaking my sneakers, but I didn't care. Nothing on this earth mattered except the stone cottage sixty yards away in the black rain.

Outside, the estate had become a living nightmare. The perimeter floodlights, high-powered halogens mounted to the brick masonry, were dead. Total, suffocating darkness smothered the grounds. Rain fell in blinding sheets, whipped by an October nor'easter that tore branches from the ancient oaks and sent them crashing across the slate pathways.

Damen was already halfway down the marble steps of the back terrace, his black dress shoes finding traction on the slick stone with terrifying familiarity. He didn't have an umbrella or a coat; the rain plastered his dark hair to his skull, his gun raised, eyes darting through the blackness.

"Vance!" Damen bellowed over the roar of the gale. "Sound the perimeter alarm! Lock down the main gates! Move Team Three to the south arbor!"

From the shadows of the courtyard, three armed security operatives in black tactical vests rushed forward, their carbines at the low ready.

"Boss, the power lines at the junction box were severed with thermite," one guard shouted through the wind. "The backup generator was sabotaged! We're operating on localized batteries!"

"He’s not at the gates," Damen snarled, not breaking stride as he leaped off the terrace and hit the sodden grass, sprinting straight toward the tree line where my small stone cottage sat nestled beneath weeping willows. "He bypassed the sensor grid through the storm culvert. If anyone fires without my direct order, I'll put a bullet in your head myself!"

I stumbled behind them, my lungs burning as cold mud sucked at my shoes. The freezing rain stung my eyes, but I pushed through the rose bushes, thorns ripping through my linen maid’s blouse, tearing the skin along my forearms.

Toby. Toby, please God, let him be breathing.

The cottage loomed out of the dark like a jagged gray tomb. Its small windows were pitch-black. The wooden front door, which I had locked with a deadbolt two hours earlier before reporting to the main manor for night cleaning, hung open on its hinges, swaying gently in the wind with a mournful, rhythmic creak.

Creak. Bang. Creak.

Damen reached the threshold first. He flattened his back against the stone facade, his weapon raised beside his temple. He didn't kick the door; he used his shoulder to ease it wide, his tactical flashlight snapping on with a blinding, five-hundred-lumen beam that sliced through the darkness of my living room.

I shoved past the guards, throwing myself through the entryway before Damen could stop me. "Toby!"

"Nora, get down!" Damen hissed, his arm shooting out like an iron bar to block my chest, forcing me behind his broad frame.

The living room was undisturbed. The worn corduroy sofa sat against the wall; Toby’s wooden train tracks were still assembled on the braided rug. The smell was wrong, though. It didn't smell like lemon soap or baby lotion.

It smelled of clean rain, gun oil, and the sharp, expensive aroma of cloves and Turkish tobacco.

Damen’s flashlight tracked across the pine floorboards. There, directly in the center of the kitchen threshold, were muddy boot prints—heavy, lugged combat soles, size eleven. They led in one direction: down the short hallway toward the bedroom.

My breath hitched in my throat, a suffocating knot of agony closing around my windpipe. I shoved Damen’s arm down with desperate, feral strength and broke into the bedroom.

The crib stood against the far wall, beneath the open window where lace curtains whipped violently in the storm.

"Toby!" I sobbed, collapsing against the wooden railing.

The crib was empty.

The fleece dinosaur blanket was folded with mathematical precision at the foot of the mattress. Resting squarely in the center of the white sheet was the battered plush fox with the missing button eye.

And resting on top of the fox was a second silver pocket watch.

Damen stepped into the nursery, his boots heavy on the floorboards. When the beam of his flashlight locked onto the crib, the silence that fell over him was more frightening than any gunfire. He slowly reached down and lifted the silver watch from the toy's chest.

He clicked the latch open with his thumb.

Inside the silver lid, engraved with microscopic, exquisite skill, were four lines of text:

To my little fox.

The blood cannot be hidden in the dirt.

Midnight at Pier Nine.

Come alone, Brother.

Damen turned the watch over. On the back, freshly scratched into the metal with the point of a tactical knife, was a small, crudely drawn smiling fox.

"Where is my baby?" I screamed, grabbing Damen’s lapels with both hands, shaking him with all the strength left in my body. Tears streamed down my cheeks, hot and bitter against the freezing rain soaking my hair. "Who took my son?! You know him! You knew that name! What does he want with Toby?!"

Damen looked down at me. The ruthless, untouchable mafia boss, a man who had built an empire on corpses and silence, had eyes that were hollowed out by an ancient, rotting wound.

"His name is Julian Cross," Damen said, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that barely competed with the howling storm outside. "He was my older brother. He was supposed to inherit the syndicate six years ago."

"Supposed to?" I cried, my fingernails digging into his soaked suit fabric. "What happened to him?!"

"I executed him," Damen whispered. "I shot him three times in the chest on the deck of our father's yacht off Nantucket and watched him sink into fifty fathoms of black water."